Many modern vehicles include rudimentary collision avoidance systems of some type. Some vehicles include more sophisticated systems such as adaptive cruise control and forward collision warning.
While many such systems are sensor-based and rely upon, for example, radar, light detection and ranging systems, infrared range finders, sound navigation and the like, more recently the use of vision-based sensing systems for automotive safety applications has grown in popularity because of their greater image generation accuracy.
Regardless of the sensor arrangement employed, today's sensing systems for safety applications face a common challenge, which is to combine both active and passive applications into a single safety system. Active safety systems are designed for applications such as adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning, lane keeping aids and the like, and thus require far distance coverage (for distances up to about 160 meters) with a relatively narrow field of view. Conversely, passive safety systems are designed for sensing objects more local to the vehicle, such as pedestrians. Passive safety systems thus require near distance coverage (for distances up to about 30 meters) with a relatively wide field of view.
It would thus be advantageous if a single vision-based sensing system was available that can be used for both active and passive safety applications and which can accommodate different distance and field of coverage requirements. Such a system would overcome the problems realized today by vehicle designers and manufacturers. Therefore, there is a need in the art for such a system.